One Day at a Time

Yeah, the vet just sounds cheerful all the time. I don't know if it's a product of youth or something she learned at school or maybe something that only will be defused by many more years of passing on very bad news. She's a great doctor but she lack gravitas - Your! Dog! Is! Going! To! Die! just lacks something comforting. When she told me the cost of treatment was going to run even more than she had estimated and I told her that there as no way I could afford it, she told me that maybe I could start playing the lottery. I laughed but it was a hollow laugh, through my tears.

And then I went back to my desk and went back to work. It's really hard to process tragedy when you are tied to your desk. But I had time to start my official position on it : I'm just going to be grateful for everyday that I have with her. I don't know how long I'm going to have her but I'll be happy every day. I was not going for teary. I was going for stiff upper lip, I was going for brave I was going for keeping calm, keeping it mellow and keeping the tears out of it. I was being a Grown Up. As I said, in my head it sounded really good. In my head I didn't cry at all.

I sat at my desk and I looked up grief support groups for people who have lost pets, I looked up cremation costs, a lot by the way. It costs a fortune to treat my large breed dog and it's going to cost a fortune to cremate her too. Big Dog bigotry, sizism if you will, sucks, its the only approved of "ism" out there. Oddly, the cremation folks seemed to do most of the grief group sponsoring, not vets. I put some thought into calling my people doctor and getting a scrip for some sort of sedative when the time comes because I know I'm not going to handle it at all well. I'm going to need to be drugged.

Hearing it out loud ruined everything. I was standing there going Are you hearing what you are saying? Are you out of your mind? Your dog is going to die and you're being all casual about it but in real life you are really freaking out, you are trying to be all cool, but you just aren't that good of an actor.

I said it to myself a lot. It sounds like I accept whats happening, I know I made the right choice and that I'm in touch with my feelings and I'm embracing reality. In my head it sounded great. I was very proud of myself. And then I tried to say it out loud and I got all teary. A blubbery mess. This isn't what it was supposed to be like.

Remember when we were little and we talked about how cool bring a grown up would be? What a cruel joke. We were lied to. We thought it was all about staying up as late and wearing whatever we wanted... Eating ice cream for dinner!. Being an adult was supposed to be the most fun ever. I'm not having fun yet. No one mentioned the part where you have to weigh your quality of life againts your dogs life.

I guess its for the best. If anyone had told us how really awful being a grown up is none of us would ever grow up. It would be a world of thirty-seven year old third graders and nineteen year olds being carried in snuggies

And all morning I'm immursing myselk in her death...And then I went home for lunch and there she was standing in the doorway, all wiggly and smiling and happy so glad to see me, Alive.

Whatever will be, will be

The vet got back with me and all the replacement therapies are out of my price range ($140-$270 per month). The vet and I decided that we are not going to treat Daisy. She had a very good year after the last crises and she could have another just like it or she could have several months. The next time she has a crises it will be the last. I am okay with this. I also get to start stepping down the dreaded pred .

Good Stress and Bad Stress

The vet called me today. At home. During the work day. I didn't get it until too late to reach her. Now, I'm going to have to call her during work tomorrow and find out what she learned. I'm worried that she called me at home. I'm worried that she did that so she wouldn't have to tell me bad news while I'm at work - Which would be a good thing because I don't really want to burst into tears at my desk, we have no doors and no privacy at all. She sounded so cheerful though but she always sounds cheerful, even when she's giving me very bad news. If she was going to give me good news wouldn't she say I've got good news! like right up front?

This is all freaking me out. I see Dogger sleeping at my feet and I think IS this because she's sick? Did she sleep before? Does this mean something bad is happening? If she drinks a lot of water, I worry, if she doesn't drink a lot of water, I worry. I suddenly have no working memory of what she was like "before". Everything she does now makes me suspicious because now I'm looking at everything through Addison's glasses.

There is mention of AD dogs not handling stress well and the importance of keeping your dog calm, and avoiding both bad stress and "good stress", i.e greeting a friend! Some places define stress as surgery, illness or traveling. And I say "What kind of traveling? Traveling in the baggage compartment flying to Vegas or the back seat driving to the store? To counter act the stress you are supposed to up the dogs pred dosage. Fine, but Dogger can't go to Marquette and be in the car all the time if she is going to be on a heavy dose of pred and peeing all the time. Is a trip to see my parents going to stress her out too much? Will I be able to go anywhere again?

I took her to the park today. Probably a bad thing, a lot of "good stress" there. We saw a lot of her friends and shared with them our news. They were all very sorry. I kept Dogger on her leash most of the time but we did do a little off leash wandering. Everything scares me now. She found a ball and went and lay down with it and my first thought was Oh damn! She's exhausted! This was too much. But she does that, she finds a ball and hunkers down to chew it - At least I think she does. Does she? is that normal? I don't know anymore.

I've been reading one of the canine Addison's groups and they are always reporting in with their dog's most recent electrolytes and the results from this test and that test and not a single person every says how much this all costs . Not a damn word. They can't all be wealthy, but no one ever says We had his 'lites tested this week and last week and the week before that and it ran us X number of bills every time, We love Fido but, gosh this is expensive!

I understand that it is am international board and the cost in X won't be the same as the cost in Y, but it wouldn't hurt to let other people know what kind of ballpark these things are running them.

I was reading on one Addison's forum and someone said "I shudder to think how many dogs are put down because of undiagnosed Addison's, when it is so easily treated" and I think, my dog may end up being put down because of cost of the treatment.

Work it

Wow, look at the time! I had no idea. I was so busy with my new work out routine I totally lost track of time. I call my workout routine Large Dog on Large Dose of Pred. It's a fabulous work out! You never stop moving. It's up and down all the time.

The work out starts slow, you pick up and carry loads of wet bedding and carpets to the basement, then you lift the heavy carpet up so it can dry out. Then you load the bedding into the machine. After that it's back up the steps to take the dog outside again and again and again and again. For your cool down, you fill her water dish again, and again and again.

Every once in a while, you do need to rest though. So then you scour the Internet for information that will help you keep your dog with you longer. For fun you can go to one of the canine Addison's groups on Yahoo and essentially get called a big newby geek because you haven't memorized your dogs blood panels and even worse, you don't know what the numbers and letters: K? CA? BUN? on your dogs blood panels mean. You also realize that eventually you will.

And you begin to recognize that if you are lucky this nightmare is not going to be over for a very long time.

The thing about my fab new workout is that I can only do it while I'm at home. There's a good ten or so hours a day that I am not here. Today before I left for work I did my workout at least four times with varying success. Even Dogger can't pee that often and she is an Olympic caliber pee-er. Then I went to work. I was gone for about five hours.I came home for lunch and I was pleasantly surprised, she had pee-ed but it was mostly confined to her bedding. I changed the bedding took Dogger out to parade around the yard three times - Yes, she could go to the backyard but if a dog pees without an audience, did she really pee?... and went back to work in time for lunch. Word to the wise, if you order the hamburger platter at Dix Grill ($2.20!) do remember to specify that you want your hamburger on a hamburger bun .

Then I came home, late of course because I had to deal with my other trauma. Oh, and when I came home and checked my mail? Letters from collection agencies. The perfect end to the perfect day.

And how was your weekend?

Remember last March?, she was very sick, but she had a good prognosis. This time she was sicker and she has a scarier diagnosis and the prognosis is not good.

Friday night, I took Dogger out for her last pee of the evening. She was walking funny, like her legs were made of spaghetti. My first thought was Oh shit is is trying to throw up! Outside!outside!outside! . We got outside and she did not throw up. She fell down.

I couldn't get her up. I was out in my yard in my nightgown at 10:30 at night and my dog couldn't get up. I tried and tried and tried. I begged, I ordered, I dragged. Nothing. I'm out in the yard holding her head in my arms and I'm thinking that I'm going to have to call Broskey to help me move her.

And then she got up.

I spent the night sleeping on the floor in "her" room. At 9am, I called the vet who told me to come in now.

First I had to get there. There was a run happening. And not, I find out a useful run or a charity run but a Run for the Donuts. I am so glad I didn't know that at the time because I would have run people over. The run was blocking all the available routes to my vet. So, a trip that started at 9:22am and should have taken fifteen minutes, took me forty-five. And Dogger is in the back seat getting worse.

I told the vet about the spaghetti legs and she said it might have been a seizure, maybe Dogger had developed epilepsy. Then the tech took Dogger outside to get a UA and on the way Dogger repeated the spaghetti thing and the vet said it was not a seizure. The vet drew blood and checked her UA and the results weren't happy. Panic values for her BUN, CREA, CA and TP levels. Bad, badder, baddest. Dogger needed to be hospitalized right now.

And so she was.

The news there wasn't much better but they had a diagnosis. Dogger most likely had Addison's . She was not producing hormones that she needs to live. Essentially, her Adrenal gland is gone, she doesn't have one anymore.

The treatment is not cheap. The most effective treatment runs $200 a month. I don't have an extra $2400 a year, I absolutely can not do that, it's not possible. I started to think about euthanasia. I left Dogger at the hospital and went home and cried. I cried pretty much all day. I was absolutely prepared to take Dogger out of her misery no questions. But taking her out of mine was different.

So. All day Saturday Dogger is being treated at the vet hospital. She's getting better every time I call to check in. The healthier she got the worse I felt, I'm going to put down my healthy, bouncy, happy Dog. Because I can't afford to keep her that way. I am a terrible dog mommy. I am going to kill my dog.

At midnight they called me with her last test, she does in fact have Addison's. And I do have options. There are other treatments, one just came out with a new generic. another one is to do nothing. We did nothing last time and she was fine for a year, but she won't survive another crises, she is going to die, but I would much rather have a natural death for her than one I am the author of. The vet is doing a lot of research and calling pharmacies and other vets and she's working to find a way to help us. I joined a Canine Addison's yahoo group. I'm not crying as often.

HAPPY SUNDAY !!!!!

Friday Catblogging

A Place for my stuff

I got my first two bounce notices from vendors the purse thief ripped off. I dutifully called them and let them know that it sucks to be us. I gave them the case number the detectives name and offered his phone number Not good enough said Harris Teeter, "Not Good Enough?" I said, "The account was closed on the twenty-sixth of December. I called the police. Everything with my name on it is listed as Lost or Stolen. Look it up."

Harris Teeter wants more than my word. I wonder why? Someone with my name waltzed in, wrote a big check and waltzed out. But it wasn't me. The real me they can trust. HT wants me to get my bank to issue an official, notarized, legal statement that vows and declares that what they have is a forgery an "affidavit of forgery", so they can close out the check and tack on another .10 per item hate surcharge and hate people a little more. Harris Teeter is all ready a pretty hateful grocery. I guess I know why now. I'm getting pretty hateful too. But I don't charge more for it. I'm hateful for free.

I called my bank."Harris Teeter wants a what?" they said. I said "an affidavit of forgery", They said Did you give them the case number? And I said "Yes" and they said They want a what?. And so I explained and I told them it needs to be notarized and they asked Um. Do you have the checks in front of you?, and I said, "No, I received copies from you and I gave them to the police. I don't have them, oh, You're a bank! My bank! Copy something!". The girl explained that the checks have been sent back to the vendors, the bank doesn't have them . They have scans of them and they are going to have to search the ether for the ones from Harris Teeter. The girl I spoke to wrote everything down and promised to call me back.

Another girl called back. She said the bank doesn't have an official "Affidavit of Forgery" but they would work something out. She suggested I come in on Friday and pick it up. I have a feeling I should get it laminated, I have a feeling I'm going to be using it a lot.

So Happy.

I decided I needed to be in the market for a new purse.

I did my research, I looked to see what the design world was feeling for the spring. It is feeling over sized clutches and large purses with bitty handles. And having seen what the designers were offering and for how much, I went to Ebay to see what had been knocked off and for how much. Still pretty much. So I started to think Green.

I like green. I saw a very cute reclaimed licence plate purse at a store and I really wanted it, until I got a good look at the price. Going green is going to cost you a lot of green. Seems wasteful to me. And then I went to Ebay.



Please note the tiny handles and the candy colored graphic print. Score! Trendy! Spy bag! Woot. Not a summer purse, obviously. It's a little smaller than I am useing now and the trends are leaning towards large bags, but since all the stuff I used to carry around got stolen, I don't need the room. I was able to go green without a lot of green.

Title

My office is a snack free zone.

We had a less than satisfactory snack machine. It was undersized and stocked with grossly over priced “healthy snacks”. I blame overzealous members of the Wellness Committee in the building for this. Other buildings have full sized machines stocked with actual snacks at reasonable prices.

We complained about the mechanical health Nazi and nothing happened. It seemed to work, it was always full and it didn’t steal money. It didn’t steal money because no one ever gave it any, it seemed to work because no one used it, and it was always full because health care professionals would rather walk into traffic than eat plastic granola. They don’t pull machines that aren’t broken and they don’t agree that just because we have measured clinically dangerous levels of self-righteousness being emmited from the machine, that it is broken.

The Wellness Community suggests we drink water when we are hungry. There are no water fountains on this floor and the soda machines do not stock it. They suggest that if we are still hungry after not drinking the water we don’t have, that we do some yoga. Until the lotus position comes in packs of eight and is covered in chocolate and available for .65, it isn’t going to do well in this building.

I was in another building today and their machine was stocked with Ding Dongs! for .65! In our machine the closest alternative was .85 pop-tarts.

Was being the operative word. We no longer have our machine. We came back from the long weekend and it was gone, in its place was another under-sized machine. An empty under sized machine. And days later, it’s still empty. Those cursed .75 cent candy bars are a thing of the past. I miss them all ready.

The only thing worse than snacks you can’t afford are snacks you can’t have.

Speaking of things you can’t have. You can’t have the house behind me, it is gone. Completely and totally gone. You remember this image?




Time passed.


And then we had



And finally, we are here




I tried to find a picture of the house, but I didn’t really spend a lot of time making sure I had properly recorded it for posterity since where was it going to go? Well. It went in the back of a gravel truck. This is as close as I could find to a before and after picture.

Before



After

The Other Me

I got a late Christmas present last week.

My bank sent me the cancelled checks that my thief wrote. I can't say she is solely "my" thief anymore but if she hadn't stolen from me first she wouldn't have had the opportunity to steal from them, I got the ball rolling on her crime wave. I am victim zero.

I was excited to see what her handwriting looked like. To see how this person who would be me wrote my name. It made me feel better. My thief isn't a phantom anymore. Seeing her writing makes her real, She's right handed, just like me! Does she wonder about me? does she fret about the marked differences in our signature's? Her printing is lovely (Why doesn't anyone notice she isn't signing the checks?! She makes the checks out in cursive yet prints her/my signature! Hello!!!) I ran my finger over the signature, I studied the way she writes her numbers to see if there was any message any clue as to who she is and why she does what she does. I called the bogus phone number she uses - it's a fax machine.

She shops at the same places I do, Kroger, Harris Teeter, Food Lion, Target. I was very disappointed that the faux me spent retail on a computer though. The real me would never do that. The real me could never afford to do that.

The faux me, doesn't have any such compunctions. I can see how much she spent but not on what. I want to know what "I" bought. It might tell me more about "me". I want to know everything about us. Is she pretty? Is she funny? What kind of car does she drive? If I hadn't all ready planned out in detail how I was going to ruin her life, remove her parenthetical children from her custody, jail her friends and acquaintances and ultimately, kill her, would I like her?

I know she wrote our first check at Staples for $640 at 8:31 pm on January 8th. I guess she wanted to make a big splash. But why did she stop? Why did she spend $595.02 at grocery stores? two Food Lions for $144.99,two Harris Teeters for $259.21 (where she used my Vic card!), two Krogers for $187.74. I mean, I know why but if she was/is in the business of printing her own money, why slum? Are malls too hard to escape from if she needed to? Does she need a door close by? Is some one outside keeping an eye on her? or is she just trash with very low expectations? Can she not see beyond Staples? Would I feel sorry for her if I found out she was just some sad Poor-Little-Match-Girl-Gone-Bad? No, the bitch stole my purse. Not sorry enough that I suddenly would not want to kill her. Perhaps it would be putting her out of her misery. She might welcome death.

She worked fast. In the checks that have been returned to date she wrote one 1/8, one on 1/9, five on 1/10 and three on 1/11. She always remembers to write in the correct year. I also suspect that she might be more than one person...

Thus far she has stolen $1677.28. My detective called me, 26 days after I filed my police report. Do you know why Nancy Drew went Girl Detective? Because she had to wait 26 days to speak the detective assigned to The Case of The Missing Purse!

Buy!

The Fed, confronted with recession fears, cut a key interest rate by three-quarters of a percentage point today. The biggest cut in 24 years.

Stocks plunged at the opening bell, with the Dow industrials losing more than 400 points in the first two minutes of trading - U.S. investors ignore emergency Fed rate cut, join global selloff on recession fears.

Oscar Nominations


And the nominees are...

Tuesday, Monday, Tomato, Tomatoe

Dogger is sleeping. She is having a bad dream, she's dreaming that she just started a long weekend and all of a sudden she has to go back to work. Her nightmare and my reality intersect. But then she gets to wake up and remember Oh Thank Gawd!My whole life is a weekend!, while I have to wake up and go back to work.

In lieu of an actual entry go look at the pretty .

HAPPY DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. DAY !!!!

HAPPY SUNDAY !!!!!!!

HAPPY SATURDAY !!!!!!!

Friday Cat Blogging

Location, Location, Location

I drove into my driveway last night not before pausing briefly to curse whomever it was who was trying (unsuccessfully) to block it again, shut off the car and looked up Jesus Christ! the house behind mine was gone.

I was in shock. I looked up and the house was gone. Normally when I look up I note how the little trees are doing growing in the rain spouts. It had quite the little thicket growing. I had been watching them grow since they were just weeds, the next thing I knew they were saplings and now they are gone, along with the house. Not really “gone”, its been turned in a pile of debris. Dogger and I had been planning on going to the park. We did not go to the park. We went instead to the pile.

The basement is still intact so it was making the debris field seem taller. I guessed that they aren’t through yet, that they will be back. If they are going to go around willy-nilly tearing down hulks, why didn’t they tear down the drug dealer’s house? It stood there for months collecting squatters and shedding roaches and it still stands there as some sort of paean to urban blight.

I called the city.

Did you know that the city can tear down a house without notifying the neighbors? Yes, yes they can! The city hires a contractor and the contractor takes down the structure. Neither the contractor nor the city is under any obligation to notify anyone that this is going to happen. I was shocked. And annoyed.

I said something about the asbestos that was no doubt throughout the house. It and the rest of the neighborhood were built in the late forties and early fifties and I imagine that there is asbestos in the homes, mine included. The woman with the city assured me that they contractors must remove any asbestos from a structure before they raze it. You would think I would have noticed asbestos abatement. It’s a pretty big deal.

There were Christmas decorations among the rubble, books, plates, toys, and a shoe. They did a hell of a job of clearing out the space before they took it down. But that’s par for the course, there was an abandoned house Dogger and I passed everyday on our walk, one day it too was a giant pile of curtains and shower cleaner and shoes and the couch and everything else. The next day the pile was gone and the ground was seeded and a month later you couldn’t tell there had ever been a house there. The woman at the city told me that they would do the same with the place behind me. Wowser. Thanks for the heads up City of Raleigh, I’m feeling the love.

They must notify the neighbors if a house on their street is going for auction, but they don’t have to tell the neighbors a house is being demolished? For auction they send out a formal letter and include a map and applicable phone numbers and dates and everything – because we the neighbors legally have to be notified that one absentee landlord is going to be replaced with another absentee landlord – This they are legally obligated to inform us, in advance.

That they are going to demolish a structure ten feet from your back window? Nah. Not required. You know, if I bother to attend this evenings ACORN meeting, I’m going to bring it up. I might not go though, the guy called me to tell me the meeting might be about the schools and held at their office instead of being a general meeting held at the rec center. I know where the rec center is and I don’t know where their office is. I see it as a two strikes against them for this meeting 1) not relevant to me unless Wake County gets into the dog training industry and 2) I’m not going out searching for anything. It’s dark, it’s cold and I have DVDs calling. It’s not much of a contest. (Updated, I skipped the ACORN meeting)

That house was more than an attractive nuisance. It was a giant shield against the busy street and the lights from the DMV and the sun and the wandering whackos... All of a sudden I’m exposed. Now I have to worry about cars ending up in my back yard. Thank You City of Raleigh!

I had been hoping that the property had been sold and maybe something else was going in. Grass is going in.

Stealing Base

Since my purse has gone missing and I have heard nothing about it in weeks, I was comfortable with the idea my purse had somehow been raptured up. And then my bank called. Some bitch stole my damn purse! This bitch stole my stuff and is now wandering around Raleigh writing checks. Big checks . She’s been to Staples and Zales and Kohl's, and Kroger and Harris Teeter. This bitch is a real shopaholic.

I called one of the grocery stores she has been frequenting and told them about her. They were shocked. I told them the next time Faux Me comes in, that they call the police and then they should tell her she won a million dollars, take her into a back room and beat her to death. I was not joking about that. I was joking when I told them to call the police.

If the heifer was just using my checks to buy food, I might be less filled with purse thief blood-lust, but sadly for her, you can’t eat a computer… So I’m going to have to kill her And she has lousy taste too, She can spend all the money she wants, and she spends $130 at Zales, at Zales! Which is not what it once was, but still, jewelry and the bitch spends $130? Low class cow.

The woman at the bank read me a list of places she had ripped off and she says “Wow, she even has your same name” and I said “Hmmmm.” And then she says “But her signature is nothing like yours”, in other words its legible. I didn’t even think to point out to the woman at the bank that Of course she's signing the checks with MY name. Do you honestly believe that she would sign it Joan S. Pursethief? . The bank is going to send me the checks for me to give to the detective in charge of my case.

Speaking of the Detective. Have any of you heard from him? I haven't. Today, after I spoke with the bank I called him to share the good news that my purse is no longer missing it is indeed stolen and there is a real live crime to go solve. Real live money from real live business is being stolen. He didn’t call me back. I called him again and said “Look. I know this isn’t a big deal to you, but I am a victim and it's your job to talk to me".

I’m soon going to have genuine evidence, if this guy won’t talk to me, what am I supposed to do with it? I want this heifer in jail. Half the retailers in Raleigh are going to want her locked up and Detective Busy won’t return my calls.

In the past, I’ve seen reports of Saudi justice. Thieves having hands chopped off and I’ve thought “Oh my goodness! That is so mean! He stole a purse, how can you disfigure him forever for that? The poor guy!” But now, I'm thinking: Bitch deserved it.

The Word of the Day is...

VENGEANCE

To sleep, perchance to dream…

So much for going home and going to sleep. After Doggers little adventure with contra-indicated food stuffs I was too wired to sleep and once I was finally in bed, The Kitty wanted me to stay up and “play”. He fooled me though, at first he was all “I’m going to curl up here on your pillow and purr into your ear” and I was all “You are the cutest widdle kittah evah!” and then he thought I wanted to play fetch with my deodorant.

I finally talked him into channeling his energies in pacing and I went to sleep.

Until, Dogger needed to go out. Now. Still half asleep I got up and took her out the front door and fell down my steps. Now fully awake, we wandered around until she found the right spot. Back inside, Dogger wanted to play too. She got her feelings hurt when I suggested she just go back to bed. She complained until I gave her a handful of her new food. I call them “cookies” when they aren’t in her bowl.

Back to bed. The Kitty was annoyed that Dogger was up and wake and being fed. The Kitty wanted to be fed too. So he ate a magazine. Loudly. The source of his pique is that I cruelly, will not allow him to eat Styrofoam! He found some, I took it away and now he’s pissed. He loves styrofoam, he craves styrofoam and he wants me to know that his life is incomplete without styrofoam. I have tried to explain to him that if cats were supposed to eat styrofoam then it would come in flavors and then I still wouldn’t let him eat it because I fear the gluten. I have however, promised him when he dies that I will bury him a styrofoam cooler so he will have plenty to eat in the after-life.

So. I am now sore. I expected to be bruised but as always, the harder I run into something the less of a bruise it leaves. I’m not sure I would want the badge of honor even if I did get one, it’s not like I could show it off at work Hey! Hey! Let me pull up my shirt and show you what I did to myself. Do you think it looks more bruisey or more hemotomy? I can’t even profit from it, a stranger slips down the steps and he scores a pay off, slip down your on steps … It’s not as though you can sue yourself. I could claim honor points because it was 4:30 AM and I was out there in service of a helpless creature. But I doubt it.

I thought I was being smart because I put shoes on before I went outside. Half asleep and still alert enough to put shoes on. The correct feet even. Who knew rain boots would have such slidy soles?

What else? Dogger has only one more day of twice-a-day pred left before she goes every-other day preding. I’m hoping that we will both get more sleep.

Promises, Promises

I promised myself as I was making my bed this morning that I would come home right after work and get right back in it. I told myself that I would come home after work, toss the dog outside and then go back to bed. I meant it too. home, dog into the yard, bed.

I was lying. It’s the kind of thing I tell myself in order to get myself up and out in the morning. The only promises more self serving than what you tell yourself to get yourself out of bed are what other people will tell you to get you into bed.

I love you

You can take a nap at lunch in the car

I’ll respect you

It’s actually 20 minutes earlier then the clock says

We’ll just cuddle

I’ll just sit here on the couch with my eyes closed for a second

I got up anyway. I still had my plan though. Work all day, sleep all night. It’s a nice thought, but it’s not going to happen. Dogger can’t stay in the yard indefinitely and both animals have to be pilled. I’m not sure what happens if they don’t get their pred on schedule but I think it’s a bad thing. Dogger might not mind too much but The Kitty is a junkie. He’s a major pain when he’s just hungry, I would hate to see him jonesing.

I want to avoid that scene. So I don’t go right to bed. Dogger and I go for a walk and wind up at the baseball field, where we were just going to hang around a little, but I found a really nice throwing stick and so we hung out there until almost dark. Dogger isn’t much for fetching but she will run in the direction the stick is thrown for days. It was nice. The dog park is great and we like there a lot but a little togetherness time is a good thing too. So, still not back in bed.

I thought once the holiday were over that I would stop going out at night. No more evening jaunts to retail hell... It was going to be just me, the animals and my TV, it was not going to include trips out into the world, once I was in for the night I was in for the night. Well, at least now I’m going out to buy things for myself. And where did I go?? To the sexy, sexy drug store. To buy hair dye. I party hard. I also am temporarily between Sex and The City DVDs.

Dogger would have gone with me but she snuck upstairs and ate The Kitty’s food. Dogger isn’t supposed to eat other food. She’s supposed to be on a trial of “limited protean” food to see if she’s allergic, it isn’t going to work if she gets unapproved snacks. And it pisses off The Kitty. And then Dogger ate a couple of ounces of dark chocolate. Fear not, at 97.6 pounds, she’ll be fine. So sayth the emergency vet I called. But, Gawd! Ya know? Now I’m not in bed because I’m watching her on her bed, sleeping.

Live Blogging The Golden Globes

In honor of the non-event I am wearing a lovely vintage gown by Ashley Taylor and shoes by Restoration Hardware.

I prepared for the evening by taking a long shower not so much in honor of the festivities but to wash that game out of my hair. Gah. Hate the Giants! But what’s really going to suck is that they are going to get beat next week so we will have ended up getting beaten by losers.

Sucks for us. And screw that Mad TV guy that made Shrub sound like a Cowboy fan! If I thought Shrub was a fan it would make me root against the Cowboys too. They made the Cowboys out to be the bad guys in the game.

Anyway. The game so upset Dogger that she took to her bed early and then promptly wet it. She’s back on prednisone. The vet has decided that she probably has a food allergy so now both she and The Kitty officially eat better than I do. Do you think if I turned up with a rash my internist would proscribe a venison and potato diet for me? No, for me the doctor would write me a proscription for an Elizabethan collar.

Topic!

I am dressed, scrubbed and live blogging! Okay. The Nominees Are..., Wow. A lot of people I have no opinion about and a handful that absolutely have to win and in a couple of cases, I require ties. I remember the announcement of the nominees. It was boring and took a long time. I do not see how reading the same list again is going to be entertaining. It supposed to take an hour

Oh. I hate Billy Bush. So far, chatting not announcing.

Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture : Cate Blanchette, I’m Not here

Chatting, chatting. Bull Shit. Billy Bush doesn’t think she should have won.

Best Supporting TV Actor : Jeremy Pivon, Entourage

How original. Soooo lame. I’ve netflixed every episode and frankly, his best work was in the early seasons. Time to move on from awarding Pivon.

Best Actress in TV Drama: Glen Close, Damages
Okay. I’m okay with that.

Best Sup. TV Actress : Samantha Morton , Longforth
Really strong field. The chick from Earl never had a chance. I’m glad to see Samantha Morton win though, she was really good in Sweet and Low Down. I’m okay with this one too.

Best Actor in TV Drama : Jon Hamm, Mad Man
Never watched it. But new guy, first timer. So good for him. Makes up for Pivon.

Best Animated Film : Ratatouille
I can’t get past the rat in the kitchen.

Hate, hate, hate Billy Bush.

Best Actress Motion Picture Comedy or Musical: Marian Cotillardi La Vie en Rose
Didn’t see any of nominated performances. Note to self, when your "vintage" gown is starting to turn into paper, it’s time to explore your options with gowns maybe a little more hauteur couture. Who calls Bingo "The Bingo". I hate that ad.

Best Supporting Actor in Motion Picture : Javier Bardem,No Country For Old Men
Another first time winner. Yay. "...For a Cohen brothers movie?" @#$% you Billy Bush.

Best Actress Mini Series : Queen Latifah, Life Support
Whatever.

Best Actor TV Comedy : David Duchovney, Californication
What!? What! Soooo wrong!

Best TV Comedy Series: Extras
What! Gawd!!! Again with the wrongness.

Best Actress TV Comedy: Tina Fey, 30 Rock
Woo! Finally one that makes me happy. Go Tina Fey! Woo-Hoo!

Best Director: Julian Schnabel, The Bell Jar and the Butterfly

Best Actor in Motion Picture Comedy or Musical : Johnnie Depp, Sweeny Todd
Okay.

Best Motion Picture, Comedy or Musical: Sweeny Todd
I need to see that.

Best TV Drama: Mad Men
Is it out on DVD?

Best Actress Motion Picture Drama: Julie Christy, Away from Her
I’m so glad Angelina Jolie didn’t win.

Best Actor Motion Picture Drama: Daniel Day Lewis, There Will Be Blood

Best Picture Drama: Atonement

Please note the aired winners are not a complete list of categories. Many categories were not announced. It would have been nice for the first time winners to get to make their first acceptance speech in front of the world. How often does anyone win anything? I feel bad for them. I hope the Writers Guild leadership and the AAMPAININMYASS know what they took from those people. I hope it’s worth it.

The writing awards were among the unannounced categories. Meow.

HAPPY SUNDAY !!!!!!!

HAPPY SATURDAY !!!!!!

Friday Cat Blogging

I'm kind of over the whole episode

I've only seen two dead Christmas trees out at the curb and my office building kept it's Christmas decorations up longer than I did. The building is now decorated for Martin Luther King Day.

Keeping the Christmas decorations past Christmas afternoon!? I don't know what to make of these Protestants. First some Baptists recognize lent and the next thing you know they're not throwing their tree's out until after epiphany.

You know what else I've noticed? Special K does not need to be sold with chocolate shards. Special K also does not need to be sold with strawberry flavored Styrofoam peanuts either. But it is. They hired some hot shot whose last gig was with Fruity Pebbles and now Special K has shards. It also comes with towels.

I was at the store and I saw a double box and it said Special K and it was really cheap, and it said FREE EXERCISE TOWEL. I didn't see the part about the shards. I wouldn't have bought it but now I'm stuck with two boxes of cloyingly sweet cereal that is not at all special. And the towel is really small.

Right now Dogger is eating something. I'm not sure what. Oh, she's eating the letter I got from the church asking for money! That's great! I'm totally sure that allowing my dog to eat an official church letter from a church official is not a one way ticket to hell. I all ready gave them money last week, but that was mostly because The Kitty had all ready shredded a lot of the letter and I felt bad. I think I should feed the little animals more.

Speaking Dogger. She is barking at me again. an hour ago when she was barking at me it was because she wanted me to get off the phone and I did and we watched more Sex and The City and she chilled but eventually, I really needed to watch the ER I taped last week - Here's the thing, There is no new programming right now, everything is in reruns. Nobody is watching TV anymore. It's done, it's over, we're all reading now, spending time with our families, playing board games, dressing our animals up. Why don't they just shelve what episodes they have? I think TV, I think Strike, I think striking writers not writing and I think reruns, lots and lots of reruns. There are a few shows with new episodes but I am not in a New Episode place. I've gotten out of the habit. At present I define "new" as "Aired six years ago but I never saw it" or "Food Network" . I think this week I'm going to tape the new Without A Trace instead. I might tape ER this week too and watch my Sex and The City DVDs instead.

I'm behind the writers on this, but damn, they need to tell their guy that he is not Lech Walesa and get some one in there who wants to deal. Steel workers can strike for years, because you know Plastic! but where else are we going to get new episodes of Pushing Daisies?

All this drama queening around isn't helping anyone. The AAMPAININMYASS needs remember who butters their bread . If we aren't watching TV we aren't watching ads and if we aren't watching ads we aren't buying products and if we aren't buying products the economy falters. The housing slump and the sub-prime mess started after the writers strike was underway. Does no one in Hollywood watch HGTV? nothing has sold on any of my home improvement shows, it used to be everything sold and usually for well above the asking price. You know what they say about butterflies? Also, I wouldn't know about the housing slump or the sub-prime mess if I didn't have to watch the news, which I wouldn't have to do if I could watch my TV shows.

TMI Theatre

I decided to forgive my living room for just being itself. I made this decision because I thought it was time, it had absolutely nothing to do with the two Sex and The City DVDs I found when I came home from work. I would like to point out that I have two working DVD players in the house and I could if I wanted to, watch the DVD’s upstairs instead, but I didn’t. I choose to watch them in the living room. Grudges are so seventh grade. Don’t tell anyone, but while I was watching SiTC, the living room was totally walking around with food in its braces. It was gross.

Dogger celebrated the living room detente by joining me on the chair and falling asleep immedatly. I think it’s time for Dogger to go back to the vet. Her rash is back and even worse, the people at the park saw it. One of them got her to lie down so they could scratch her belly and there it was in all it’s angry glory. The one side is very gross. I tried to make her arrange herself so it was covered up but she wasn’t having any of it. Talk about seventh grade! On one side its pretty puppy pink and the other side its angry and red. And it’s not really a “rash” its more like chafing. I know, TMI.

Its like the guy whose office is next to mine. He has a rash. He’s had a rash. A big rash. He itches all the time. He comes into my office to bring me something and he’s itching,I go to to take him somthing and he's itching. When he’s not actully itching, he’s on the phone telling other people about his itching. At length. It’s gross, he’s gross, I am grossed. It’s almost as gross than the boss I had years ago who spent most of his time “rearranging” himself. He did it all the time, the rest of us would be breathing, he would be “arranging”. What was worse was that we worked in food service. I had a boss a few years ago who would pick his nose while talking to me about how he wanted me to phrase the email letting department heads know that Fed-Ex had been there. The itching thing is worse.

The vet is going to a rerun of the last three or four times I took Dogger in for her chafing issue. They will shave her, sell me a bottle of $17 dog shampoo with orders to bathe her twice a week, tell me there isn’t a whole lot else they can do for her, then give me a bottle of $57 antibiotics that will douse the red and return her to all over pretty puppy pink until the prescription runs out in two weeks.

The last time I took Dogger in the vet made noises about a possible food allergy but I don’t think that’s the case. I could see an allergy leaving her covered with an angry rash, not playing leap frog all over her. Poor Dogger is a quilt of shaved fur, newly regrown fur, and thinning fur covering one angry red patch.

Doggers' coat looks like my front yard in the spring. Do dogs get nematodes?

After

I miss my Christmas tree.

I walked past my living room and it's a black hole. A ugly black hole. I saw an ugly black hole full of ugly boxes. Technically my decorations are still in the room, they're just boxed up. Last year I worried about the tree making it through another year, this year I worry about the box. It's falling apart and in worse shape than the tree. The tree will is going to be fine next year but I'm afraid I'm going to have to get a new box.

Do they sell new boxes? Can you buy a Christmas tree box without having to buy a Christmas tree? I don't like the bag things they do sell, I think my tree needs the discipline of a real box. It can be very hardheaded sometimes.

Last week at this time I had a glowing jewel in my living-room. It was beautiful, it was like a huge piece of jewelry. Really expensive jewelry. Rubies, emeralds, some diamonds, an armadillo... True, it would have been a huge piece of jewelry, borderline tasteful, perhaps a large brooch - No! a display piece! And it made my whole house nicer,It made life nicer.

It made me spend time in my living-room and not just because my TV is there - I spent time in there without the TV being on! On purpose! And it wasn't just the tree either, it was the mantel mantelpiece , it was the cards and the stockings and the creche' - Duh! The creche' is still up! My little animal collection volunteered to hang out with it and they camouflaged it through the great boxing up over the weekend. Now that I think about it, that box is shot too. I know they don't sell replacement boxes for creche' sets.

I would think there would be a whole industry dedicated to replacement boxes. Boxes have limited life spans and they fail, years before whatever they hold give up the ghost. Christmas tree's for instance, I mean you have a 7.5 foot tree, its a lot like the other 7.5 foot trees and while they aren't interchangeable some are fuller than others, branch configuration varies, but still, interchangeable boxes should be available to the public. I shouldn't have to thinking about buying a whole new tree just because my box is shredded.

Sigh. You know, the boxes are still down stairs, I could put everything back up... I don't know. Maybe if I turned the lights on in that room or opened the blinds it would be less black hole-y. I could turn on the TV, switch the fireplace on, break out the fuzzy jammies, curl up with my remote, bring the dog up and get back to normal. I'm nextflixing Sex and The City the whole series. I think I'll get used to my living-room again by the time I find out which one is actually a man. I've watched the first season and I think at least one of them is a man. There's the man one, the virgin one, the pinhead one and the Sara Jessica Parker one.

Front Page Mass

I almost went to this Mass. I had a lot to do around the house on Sunday and I thought if I worked through noon Mass I could go to this one instead. I'm so glad I didn't. I hadn't thought about covering my head, all the women are wearing their shame Mantillas! I knew they were going to do the Mass in Latin, I didn't realize they were also going to do the mass in 1961.

Front page of the paper! Above the fold! Isn't there a war going on?

The woman and girls veiled in the picture were all young, clearly born into a Church were they were not obligated to veil themselves. Where did those women get those mantillas anyway? I've been to a Catholic bookstore now and again over the years and I don't remember seeing them sold. Books about the evils of protestantism and failings of communism, Rosaries for giants, clocks illustrated with faces of popes throughout the years... but Google showed me the light. A search pulled up Chapel Veils and the women who wear them, and then blog all about it.

One of the veiled bloggers wears hers to Latin Rite masses she attends ( how and where? these just got okayed again, so I'm thinking break away Catholics or as the rest of us call them "heretics") at her school but not the regular weekly masses she also attends. She says it would make the other students mad or even open her up to attack! I have seen veiled women in Church and I don't believe I have ever had to fight the urge to beat them. There is a certain hint of martyrdom to the veiled women.

Who wants to attack these pure, modest, pious women? The Feminists! In 1968 NOW told us to stop wearing our veils! "Those feminazi's forced the veils from our heads and tore them from our hands!". Michelle Malkin thinks they are groovy too, but she thinks burkas are a great way to get out of shaving your legs too.

One of the veiled women reprinted some material that came with her new Chapel Veil

Because the wearing of a head covering by women at religious services is a symbol of subjection within many churches, NOW recommends that all chapters undertake an effort to have all women participate in a 'national unveiling' by sending their head coverings to the task force chairman. At the Spring meeting of the task force of women and religion, these veils will be publicly burned to protest the second class status of women in all churches. (Dec. 1968)

Well. Yeah. And Um, Nope. I want to see a real reason that the vast majority of Catholic women put their veils away and it was not because NOW told them too. There was something else. Oh, that's right Vatican II! A canon lawyer chimes in . Short version, we aren't and weren't required to wear them, true there are scriptural references to women covering their hair but not in reference to covering their hair at Mass.

Oh, and I also learned that the Liberals are to blame for our modern, uncovered hair. Liberals are also very anti-Catholic and The Veiled women are not liberals. Not even kind of. It's kind of a thing with them.

I have gone to a Latin Mass before, I thought. What I went to was the Modern Mass said in Latin, not this museum piece. Today, you will periodically , say every fifteen years or so, see a woman with her head covered in church. She is 102 years old or twenty-seven and either on her way to the convent or living in a strange retro place. It's fine to veil if she wants to, but if she had to do it every mass, every week, she would pin a kleenex on her head and pray for a short homily.

I don't get it and I don't want to wear one.

Back to my life

1+7=8 Cool!

Two replacement credit cards and a new bank account later, I decided they needed a home. It was time to replace my wallet.

Do you remember the provenance of your wallet? My stolen wallet, the one I've had since college replaced a gift from my best friend back in Junior High. I replaced it only because I thought that I had moved, at last, beyond Velcro.

Sigh. I miss my wallet. I've lost literally, gawd, I don't know over the years dozens of credit cards. They go through my fingers like water, I swear. But I have never lost a wallet, rather, it was not "lost", I have never had my wallet stolen before.

I can replace the credit cards and my drivers licence but what about my official X-Files fan club card?! What about the Worst Horoscope Ever? August of 1989 I had a horoscope that told me I could ill and not know it, should think about life on the streets and then some other warning, I think about writing thank you notes or something. I don't remember and I CAN'T GO CHECK. You know what else I can't go check? One of my credit cards in through my alumni society. I can't remember if my stolen card still used the old name of my school or if it had the new name on it. I don't like the new name, I prefer the old one. Sigh. It's not just things they steal when they steal from you.

Friday night I decided that I was tired of rooting around in my purse to find things: I needed a new wallet. I thought How Hard Can It Be? How Many Different Styles Are There? HA. A lot and A lot I don't like. I also wanted a new checkbook cover. The plastic is okay, but its so plastic and my stolen one was really cool. Sigh.

Anyway. I went to Target. Sigh. Everyone must have had their purses stolen because they were cleaned out. There were a few there, but they weren't what I wanted. The ID holders were all in the wrong place. I want to be able to hand over my ID to the store clerk with out having them hold the wallet open open. If the ID window is in the right place, the wallet stays open to the window, without splaying the rest of the contents of the wallet out for the world to see. It's very genteel. The designers of wallets for the most part are not interested in gentility.

I left with out a wallet but with some 75% off Christmas lights.

Saturday morning I was off again, this time in pursuit of a new checkbook cover. I wanted my old one back, so I went back to the store where I got it originally, but where as it turns out, there is now a cupcake store. Yay for Raleigh being all trendy, but not yay for me getting my checkbook cover back. It was special damn it. It was from Tibet, it was a Tibetan checkbook cover! Free Tibet! Give me my damn checkbook cover back!

After I walked all over Glenwood Avenue, I remembered that the Tibetan checkbook cover store may have moved to Moore Square. So I went to Moore Square. I drove.

The Tibet store was there but they didn't have checkbook covers. But what if I don't want an Issac Mizrahi checkbook cover? Purse thieves should burn in hell. I decided I didn't have to use a Mizrahi checkbook cover or wallet - even if they were the best of what I had found. I really didn't want to have to settle on this. I only replace these things never and if I don't like them now, I'm going to have a long time to not like them. And no, I won't just get used to it. Every time I use whatever it is I'll just think about what is wrong with it and why I'm not happy with it and how happy I was with my old one and how pissed I am because I don't have them anymore. Being unhappy forever with my wallet choice will not aid in my healing.

I need to heal. I went to Kohl's.

There I found a healing salve. A wallet that is almost exactly like my stolen wallet. Only a little smaller and red. I like it. The checkbook covers didn't do it for me, I want my Tibetan checkbook cover. Damn it. I was off to World Market. Perhaps I could grow to love a Guatemalan or Cambodian checkbook cover.

No love. No checkbook covers. I went home to lick my wounds.

HAPPY SUNDAY !!!!!!

HAPPY SATURDAY !!!!!!!!

Friday Cat Blogging

Mad Dogs

You know what would be good? If they had a column in the paper called What All Those Sirens Were About, it could say "If you live in X neighborhood and you heard a whole lot of sirens last night around X time, it was a warehouse fire" and it could go on "If you live in Y area and you heard a lot of sirens about X time, it was a burglary in progress" and "If you live in Z area, and you heard sirens at X time, they were going to a heart attack". It would also be nice if there was a web site out there that gave examples of local sirens this is an example of Town fire truck, this is the ambulance, this is the cop car. All the sirens are different in a city, the sheriff sirens are different from the highway patrol which are different from the city cops. We also have Capital Police and Dix as police too. I want to know who and what I hear so often.

I learned through my job that if you are involuntarily committed, you are picked up by sheriff's deputies and they cuff you and throw you in their cruiser and they will come and get you whenever they get the time. If you weren't suffering from paranoia and you didn't have a persecution complex, you will after some guy comes in the middle of the night and slaps you in cuffs. But on the other hand, you don't get involuntarily committed because you are little Mary Sunshine anyway. Maybe it makes you even more obnoxious because all of a sudden your paranoia seems justified. It would suck to listen to some guy and all the little voices in his head telling you they told you so.


On to another topic. A little.

I took Dogger back to the park today. One because she needed to get out a little and the ground there is very padded for her poor sore feet and joints, and two because I thought that the extreme cold would scare away the fair-weather park goers and allow Dogger to have a unfettered trip for once. And I was right, there were only seven or eight dogs there, the last time we went while it was warmer there were twenty-five and that's just too many and people just do not supervise their dogs the way they should. They aren't at a playground and their "kids" aren't little children, they are in actuality, very well armed, not very bright, full grown animals.

We weren't even through the gate when this smallish sized dog snarled at Dogger through the fence.And if Dogger had snarled back at the little beast the melee would look like Doggers fault. I had Dogger on the leash and she forgot about the little beast after we came in but the whole time I was thinking Dumb Dog! I've seen Dogger take a larger dog than you down to the ground for pulling that kind of crap with her before she was even through the gate .

I'm afraid my anxiety is beginning to affect her. She did a little playing but mostly she spent her time leaning hard into me. The couple of times she did go out and about I followed her because now I'm always worried about What If... and today she seemed kind of shy with the other dogs and not really invested in the play. She preferred the outer boundaries of the park, and part of me thinks Aimless wandering away from the other dogs is okay, it's safe and good exercise for us both. But on the other hand, It's really cold. Is this worth it? She can lean against me at home, she can wander in our own yard. I come out here and make the effort to be here because this is supposed to be fun for her and me. Is she having fun? Do I dare let her? in the past I've watched her joyfully join in to the dog park society and have a huge blast and I know it's had a positive effect on her.

Other dog owners have said that the park has made their dogs more agressive, but maybe that's just a by-product of being a dog around a lot of other dogs and dogs at play sometimes play agressively, "playing rough" and that is part of being an animal. The big dogs at the park play rough, Dogger is a big dog and she plays like one. The big dogs play rough and they get into it - little dogs and even full sized people have been known to get run over.

She has to be really pushed to get teethy, but, when she took down the dog at the gate that time, now months ago, we had been there less than a minute and I only turned my back to shut the gate. The other dog may have started it but Dogger was going to finish it.

That happened months ago. But lately, any agressive sounds at the park make me nervous and I'm making her nervous. I want us both to go and have fun.

The Late Shift

Dogger and I are recovering from our forced march. Dogger is sore, I'm sore. If my two legs are stiff and hateful this morning I can only imagine how her four legs are taking it out on her. Last night she was hobbling around. At one point I heard her whimpering because she couldn't get up off her bed! I had to hold her up by her harness, like a little doggy gate belt and walk her outside so she could pee.

I was hobbling, she was hobbling. We were sad.

And then we both went to bed. For a while. At two something she needed to go out to pee. Fine. I don't know how familiar you are with weather patterns in the southeastern U.S, but Tuesday night? A front came though, a cold front and into this Dogger needed to go out and pee. It was very cold in my nightgown. I was alert enough at two something to remember to turn off the alarm but I was not alert enough to find shoes. I am fairly certain I heard Dogger chortle as she wandered all over the front yard to find the perfect place to pee.

But, I was okay with it. She would have been awake earlier if I hadn't forced her to hike for hours. This was my penance. She did her thing and we went back inside, I locked the door, gave her a cookie, put her back to bed and then I went back to bed - Happy that her feet had recovered enough to wander around the yard that way for so long. I was rewarded by the Kitty curling up against me, purring.

At four something I became aware of another sound. Whimpering. Dogger has only woken me up in the middle of the night a few times, when she was a puppy and when she was very, very ill. The two something pee break didn't worry me be that much because she had slept through her regularly scheduled potty breaks. She woke up, she relived herself and she should have gone back to sleep. End of story.

Now, hours later she was up again. I was having some bad flashbacks of the last time I wandered around in the yard with her in the middle of the night.

At four something I was more alert. I had both glasses and shoes on. While we were out front a cop car zoomed down the street. he didn't seem to notice the woman wandering around her yard in her night gown. Maybe he didn't even see. He was speeding. I thought I looked very odd. Maybe a lot of women around there wander their yards with their dogs in the middle of the night in their nightgowns. I'm usually asleep then.

Dogger didn't want to use the front yard. Dogger wanted to growl at a plastic bag in a neighbors yard. I took this as a good sign. If she felt strong enough to want to throw down with a bag, she couldn't feel that bad. When she was ill, she was pretty single minded about her potty breaks.

We went to to the backyard where she found the perfect spot. although you could tell her joints were hurting her. I thought momentarily about going and propping her up but she took care of business on her own. The she wanted to play. She wanted to play chase and I started to feel significantly less sorry for her.

We went back to bed. Two hours later I was out wandering around the yard again, this time it was for our regularly scheduled trip to the yard. She still seems a little tender, but then so am I. I, like her, feel very tired now - but not so tired that I'm not going to trot her butt outside every hour or so before we both go to bed and stay in bed.

The Long Walk Home

I stayed up New Years Eve and watched the ball drop. Dogger, The Kitty and I each had a spot of champagne- which Dogger liked until she realized it wasn’t water while The Kitty was put out that I even made him taste it - It was $8.99 a bottle from the grocery store, I shouldn’t have been surprised The Kitty didn’t like it. I drank two glasses and dumped the rest into my New Years Day greens and black eyed peas and then I stayed up too late reading my book.

I party hard.

New Years Day, however. I got moving. I ate some of my greens and peas and Dogger and I headed over to Broskey and Alphagals to go for a long walk . I decided we wanted to do this after an unfulfilling trip to the park New Years Eve. Curse Drama Dog.

Dogger was very excited about going for a walk.

About two hours into our walk, the first time I told Dogger It’s okay baby girl, we’re almost home, I was lying, lying, lying. I didn’t know I was lying, but I was lying. The second time I told her that, about an hour later, she just looked at me. She knew I was lying to her.. A couple hours later, when we were actually almost home, and I told her that again, she looked at me as if to say You know what? Why don’t you just stop talking for a while. I don’t want either of us to say anything we’ll be sorry for. We should just walk in silence for a while, okay?

In my defense, I did think the trail looped around. And it does, as Alphgal told me later : The earth does curve.

At one point I took a path off the path, it was as paved and marked as the “real” path and it seemed to go back in the direction I needed to be going in, and I thought that if I followed it, I would at be heading back in the direction I had started in, the land of milk and honey where I had left my car. And so we walked and walked and walked and oddly, on this trail there were no walkers or bikers or horses. Finally, a pair of horseback riders past us and I at least thought we were heading in the right direction. I never saw them again. Time passes, at about the time I was concerned that I had made a terrible mistake, a biker passed us., I asked her if she knew where the trail spit out and she said she didn’t know but we could always turn around. Easy for someone on a bike to say. Bikes are faster and they cover more ground then say, someone on foot. She disappeared ahead of us and I finally saw a horse print which laid to rest my suspicions that they had been raised up bodily. We walked and walked and I was like Shouldn’t I be hearing the road by now? And where is everybody? Before we turned off I felt like I was at the mall.. And then the biker came back and reported the trail had washed out and she sped away.

!@#$&*^%.

We turned around. It’s okay baby girl, we’re almost home”. Walk, walk, walk, walk. We got back to the main trail and met about 3000 fellow hikers/bikers/horseback riders. And no one else looked like they had been walking forever. The other dogs weren’t trudging, they were trotting. Pretty much I was dragging Dogger along behind me. And we walked some more because the end of the trail must be soon right? And we pass a grave yard and I had dark thoughts about this damn endless trail This is what purgatory is. Act right or you’ll just keep walking and walking and going nowhere. Be good or spend eternity walking this trail. Heaven may be at the other end but by the time you get there, you’ll be too tired to care.

And we kept walking. We could have turned around but what if the end was around the next turn? Finally, a You Are Here sign . I was relived to see we were not actually in Virginia, the map, which I read incorrectly ( how many You Are Here arrows does one sign need? Is it really necessary to give an example of what the You Are Here arrow looks like?!), seemed to put me dangerously near Cary and even worse The Airport! You don’t walk to the airport! The airport is not near where I left my car!

We turned around. It’s okay baby girl, we’re almost home!. Walk, walk, walk.

And we walked right into Broskey, Alphagal and Tiny E! Yay! Dogger asked to ride in Tiny E’s buggy. They went on their merry way and we walked on.

And on
and on
and on.

Seven miles is a very long way. I brought Dogger home and she passed out half way through her dinner. I'm going to be careful how I use the W word for a while.